As deregulation of the telephone industry continues and as companies prepare to enter the local telephone access market, there is a need to offer new and innovative services that distinguish common carriers from their competitors. This cannot be accomplished without introducing new local access network architectures that will be able to support these new and innovative services.
Conventionally, customer premises telephone and/or data connections contain splitters for separating analog voice calls from other data services such as Ethernet transported over digital subscriber line (DSL) modems. Voice band data and voice signals are sent through a communications switch in a central or local office to an interexchange carrier or Internet service provider. DSL data is sent through a digital subscriber loop asynchronous mode (DSLAM) switch which may include a router. The DSLAM switch connects many lines and routes the digital data to a telephone company's digital switch.
A major problem with this configuration is that interexchange carriers attempting to penetrate the local telephone company's territory must lease trunk lines from the local telephone company switch to the interexchange company's network for digital traffic. Furthermore, the Internet service provider must lease a modem from the local phone company in the DSLAM switch and route its data through the local phone company's digital switch. Thus, the local phone company leases and/or provides a significant amount of equipment, driving up the cost of entry for any other company trying to provide local telephone services and making it difficult for the interexchange companies to differentiate their services. Furthermore, since DSL modem technology is not standardized, in order to ensure compatibility, the DSL modem provided by the local telephone company must also be provided to the end user in the customer premises equipment (CPE). Additionally, since the network is not completely controlled by the interexchange companies, it is difficult for the interexchange companies to provide data at committed delivery rates. Any performance improvements implemented by the interexchange companies may not be realized by their customers, because the capabilities of the local telephone company equipment may or may not meet their performance needs. Thus, it is difficult for the interexchange companies to convince potential customers to switch to their equipment or to use their services. These factors ensure the continued market presence of the local telephone company.
As part of this system, there is a need for improved architectures, services and equipment utilized to distinguish the interexchange companies' products and services. One such service is telephone listing directory assistance.
Techniques for searching telephone directory assistance databases and providing telephone number listings are well known in the prior art. Some of these techniques search based upon: the category of a business' products and/or services, the business's name, a person's last name or a person's last name and first name, and the distance from a certain address. A printout of certain pages from AT&T's Toll-Free Internet Directory, attached as Appendix A, provides an example of some of the services currently being provided by on-line directory assistance services. As is the case for any user connected to the Internet over a POTS connection, users of Internet-based telephone listing directory assistance services sometimes experience lengthy delays in receiving responses due to the asynchronous nature of data transfers over the Internet. Further, users must be computer and Internet literate to use such services. Therefore, there is a need for directory assistance services that are capable of interpreting spoken natural language directory assistance queries and that are capable of transferring data at a committed high-speed delivery rate.